More evidence of Boris’s cluelessness
There comes a point at which additional commentary on this blog is pretty unnecessary, and trying to think of a title for yet another post showing how hopeless Mayor Boris would be is just more effort than it’s worth. Johann Hari’s encounter with Boris, described in today’s Independent, speaks for itself.
when we get onto the issues, I get worried. I ask him why he supported Section 28, the notorious legislation that banned teachers from “promoting” homosexuality – and it quickly becomes clear he doesn’t actually know what it was. “As I recall the issue was to do with compulsion. Wasn’t the question [about] whether or not schools should be compelled to have [these lessons]? I thought the issue was: are you compelling teachers in schools to take a particular line? I’m not in favour of that… There’s far too much proscription already of what teachers have to say and do. I’m against bossiness”
But Boris, I explain – Section 28 was the act of bossiness and proscription. It was a flat-out ban, telling teachers not to talk about gays. He goes into his ‘oh cripes’ routine, as if it is charming that he supported a piece of legislation he had totally misunderstood.
On all the questions, he seems to go into a sort of panicked free association, where he desperately to find a link to something he does know about. When I ask him what he would do to reduce the sky-high rate of suicide among gay teenagers, he starts talking about the need to get kids out of gangs – as if the Brick Lane Massiv is stocked with gay-boys and lesbians. He admits he isn’t sure what you call the unions between gay people – they’re civil partnerships, Boris.
If that’s the best he can do when trying to court the gay vote - Hari’s interview was primarily intended for consumption by Attitude readers - I don’t think he’ll be getting very far.
March 29th, 2008 at 17.12
In contrast, we are told Ken “knows the names of STD clinics all over London”. I wonder if Churchill, the greatest leader of the 20th century, knew every STD clinic in London.
By the way, Hitler had a good memory for detail too,
March 29th, 2008 at 17.44
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Godwin’s_law
March 29th, 2008 at 19.35
Heaven forbid that I was making a direct comparison between Ken and Hitler. The point was simply that having an eye for detail does not (necessarily) make a great and virtuous leader. Neither does knowing the name of every STD clinic, although it may help if you’re trying to impress.
March 29th, 2008 at 21.14
Having a great eye for detail certainly doesn’t do any harm to one’s leadership abilities, though, does it?
Besides, as so often, those arguing against the Stop Boris campaign - which doesn’t support any specific alternative candidate - end up resorting to arguing against Boris’s opponents rather than in favour of Boris himself. I can’t see any way of reading that Independent article to suggest that Boris deserves to be Mayor.
Rather, it is clear from it that he is hopelessly inadequate and that he has been primed with rehearsed lines to reel out at any opportunity, no matter how irrelevant they may be. He’s more like a search engine that has only indexed a few sentences rather than the multitude of issues a Mayor needs to get to grips with:
“Your query was ‘preventing gay teenage suicides’. No pages were found matching all these words. Did you mean ‘preventing teenage murders’?”